And Zeezrom said again: Shall he save his people in their sins? And Amulek answered and said unto him: I say unto you he shall not, for it is impossible for him to deny his word. (Alma 11:34)Zeezrom takes great umbrage at this, asking what use would the Savior be if he didn't save the people. But Amulek responds that God "said that no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of heaven; therefore, how can ye be saved, except ye inherit the kingdom of heaven? Therefore, ye cannot be saved in your sins."
I hear similar ideas being bandied about today. The concepts of worthiness and cleanliness are being portrayed as evil. We all sin, so the thought goes, and we cannot be perfect in this life. So the focus of the church on worthiness and cleanliness is destined to bring misery to its members who can never reach such lofty goals. It's like Zeezrom's thought that a Savior that doesn't save the people in their sins doesn't do us much good.
But to those who read carefully, the answer to this conundrum becomes much clearer when several generations later, Helaman teaches his sons the following:
And remember also the words which Amulek spake unto Zeezrom, in the city of Ammonihah; for he said unto him that the Lord surely should come to redeem his people, but that he should not come to redeem them in their sins, but to redeem them from their sins. (Helaman 5:10)I love that scripture. The way I think of it, imagine a child who wants to eat dinner, who is playing in the mud. A parent has a hose with which to clean the child off. But to clean up for dinner, the child must leave the mud. The hose doesn't do much good if the child stays in the mud. And the child will not be allowed to eat in such a filthy state. Similarly, to be saved, we must repent, and leave our sins. Yes, everyone sins, and we don't need to feel despair about having sinned. However, we also shouldn't feel so comfortable in this sinful state that we remain there, and fail to achieve the blessings of the atonement. Like the child, we need to get out of the mud so the hose can do its work. That's what it takes to be worthy, to be clean. We have to repent often and remove ourselves from sinful situations so the atonement of Christ can clean us.
We've recently discuss the Savior's atoning sacrifice in my New Testament class. It was so heart-warming. I was contemplating on a major decision in my life when we were discussing it and it really helped me to know what Heavenly Father wants me to do. I love the Savior. I don't think there is anything that I can do to fully express how thankful I am for what He did.
ReplyDeleteI liked your analogy of the mud. Before I became a teacher, my junior year of college, I worked at an oil refinery to save money for school. The job did not much like women on their site, so they gave me the worst jobs ever to try and get me to leave. (I stuck with the job that summer, they saw I was a good worker, and within three weeks, I had the cushiest job in the site with a huge raise.) My second day there, they had me working in a huge hole where they were getting ready to clean and prepare pilings for a new structure. The backhoe operator hit a water pipe in the hole and before too long, my other co-worker and I were up to our knees in thick, gooey, sticky, awful mud. It was hard to take a step or move about. The mud covered me from head to toe by day's end. When I arrived home, I washed and washed to get clean and it seemed to take forever. Sometimes, in life, I feel like I get stuck in the "mud" of sin and I wonder how will I EVER get clean. How grateful I have been, and am, for the Savior, the Atonement, and for the gospel. Collectively, they ALL help me get clean. Thank you for the reminder.
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